Health briefs

Medicaid recipients who are insured with CoventryCares can now receive a free membership to the YMCA of Greater Erie.

CoventryCares' Movers and Shapers Fitness program covers the membership costs of adults and children on the Medicaid health plan.

In order to receive the free annual membership, children insured by CoventryCares must visit the YMCA at least six times in 60 days, while adults must visit at least 10 times in 60 days.

The program is accepted at all YMCA of Greater Erie locations. For more information, call 452-1432.

Solo stars at higher death risk than bands

Rock 'n' roll will never die -- but it's a hazardous occupation.

A new study confirms that rock and pop musicians die prematurely more often than the general population, and an early death is twice as likely for solo musicians as for members of bands.

Researchers from Liverpool John Moores University studied 1,489 rock and pop stars who became famous between 1956 and 2009 and found they suffered "higher levels of mortality than demographically matched individuals in the general population."

American stars are more likely to die prematurely than British ones.

Lead researcher Mark Bellis speculates that could be because bands provide peer support at stressful times.

The research was published Thursday in online journal BMJ Open.

Heavy price: Medicare overpaying for back braces

Internet sale price for a standard back brace: $99.99.

What Medicare pays for the item: $900-plus.

A federal report released Wednesday offers a look at how wasteful spending drives up health-care costs as investigators found that Medicare paid $919 on average for back braces that cost suppliers an average of $191 each.

"The program and its beneficiaries could have paid millions of dollars less if the Medicare reimbursement amount ... more closely resembled the cost to suppliers," according to the report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

In a written response, Medicare's administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, said Medicare will consider including back braces in a competitive bidding plan for medical equipment. The bidding experiment, expanding across the country, has been shown to save taxpayers money.

Budget talks between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, may lead to more competitive bidding, a shift that some Democrats are urging and industry is fighting.

9/11 cancer study won't settle debate over risks

The most comprehensive study of potential World Trade Center-related cancers raises more questions than it answers and won't end a debate over whether the attacks were really a cause.

The study suggests possible links with prostate, thyroid and a type of blood cancer among rescue and recovery workers exposed to toxic debris from the terrorist attacks. But there were few total cancers, and even the study leaders say the results "should be interpreted with caution."

The study involved nearly 56,000 people enrolled in a registry set up to monitor health effects from those exposed to the aftermath of the Trade Center attacks. Most participants volunteered for enrollment, which could skew the results if people who already had symptoms were more likely to enroll than healthier people.

Cancers diagnosed through 2008 were included in the study, but that's just seven years after the 2001 attacks, and cancer often takes longer to develop. People diagnosed with cancer before the attacks were excluded from the study.

Cancer rates were compared with those in the general New York state population. But the researchers had no data on whether people in the study had risk factors for getting cancer, including a strong family history, or if they had existing cancer that wasn't detected until after the disaster.

Participants are being monitored for health issues and may have gotten more cancer screening than other people, which also could skew the results.